World
MEPs endorse blanket ban on facial recognition in public spaces

Members of the European Parliament endorsed on Wednesday a blanket ban on AI-powered facial recognition in public places.
With 335 votes in favour and 235 against, lawmakers pushed to move forward with the sweeping prohibition, rejecting an amendment that could have paved the way for law enforcement to resort to biometric identification in exceptional cases.
Biometrics refers to systems that analyse biological features, such as facial traits, eye structures and fingerprints, to determine a person’s identity. Its possible use by government agencies has been often linked to authoritarian regimes.
The total ban is part of a draft piece of legislation, known as the Artificial Intelligence Act, that aims to ensure the development of human-centric, ethically responsible and environmentally sustainable AI systems across Europe.
The act as a whole was backed by 499 votes in favour, 28 against and 93 abstentions during a plenary session in Strasbourg.
The regulation, which is considered a world-first attempt to rein in AI’s excesses, still needs to be negotiated between the European Parliament and member states in what is known as a trilogue.
The talks, due to kick off on Wednesday evening, are expected to be intense and heavily influenced by the sudden emergence of chatbots, a rapidly evolving technology that policymakers are still trying to understand.
Brussels hopes to wrap up the AI Act before the end of the year.
The amendment rejected on Wednesday had been submitted by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and would have allowed law enforcement to use biometrics in three different cases: the search for missing people, the prevention of a terrorist attack and the detection of criminals who are wanted under a European arrest warrant.
MEPs also voted down an EPP-drafted recital that argued the risks posed by real-time biometrics in public spaces could, in exceptional cases, be “outweighed by the substantial benefits to society, persons and particularly children’s safety and life.”
The recital received 233 in favour but 327 against.
The original proposal presented by the European Commission in April 2021 classified the use of real-time biometrics in public spaces as having an unacceptable risk to citizens and therefore strictly prohibited.
The Commission, however, did include three targeted exemptions for law enforcement, which the EPP echoed in its amendment.
But when the file reached the European Parliament, MEPs decided to broaden the list of banned AI systems and did away with the dispensations foreseen for biometrics in public spaces, calling the technology “intrusive and discriminatory.”
The blacklist also includes biometric categorisation based on sensitive characteristics such as gender and race; predictive policing systems; emotion recognition systems in law enforcement, schools and work offices; and untargeted scraping of images obtained from the Internet in order to create facial recognition databases.
The possible use of biometrics by law enforcement has long been a controversial point of discussion, with many MEPs describing the practice as incompatible with democratic values. The debate has been inevitably shaped by developments in China, where the Communist Party has rolled out a massive, sophisticated network of facial recognition cameras to monitor the country’s population.

World
Trump says he's considering 'taking away' Rosie O'Donnell's US citizenship
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he is considering “taking away” the U.S. citizenship of a longtime rival, actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits such an action by the government.
“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He added that O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland in January, should stay in Ireland “if they want her.”
President Donald Trump signs an executive order on birthright citizenship in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Rosie O’Donnell speaks at a rally calling for resistance to President Donald Trump, in Lafayette Park in front of the White House in Washington, Feb. 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
The two have criticized each other publicly for years, an often bitter back-and-forth that predates Trump’s involvement in politics. In recent days, O’Donnell on social media denounced Trump and recent moves by his administration, including the signing of a massive GOP-backed tax breaks and spending cuts plan.
It’s just the latest threat by Trump to revoke the citizenship of people with whom he has publicly disagreed, most recently his former adviser and one-time ally, Elon Musk.
But O’Donnell’s situation is notably different from Musk, who was born in South Africa. O’Donnell was born in the United States and has a constitutional right to U.S. citizenship. The U.S. State Department notes on its website that U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization may relinquish U.S. nationality by taking certain steps – but only if the act is performed voluntary and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship.
President Donald Trump, right, speaks during a news conference with Elon Musk in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, May 30, 2025,. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, noted the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the Fourteen Amendment of the Constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born U.S. citizen,” Frost said in an email Saturday. “In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to win his second term. She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage.
Responding to Trump Saturday, O’Donnell wrote on social media that she had upset the president and “add me to the list of people who oppose him at every turn.”
World
Russia's Lavrov warns US against 'exploiting' alliances as he meets with Kim Jong Un in North Korea

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed Russia and North Korea’s “invincible fighting brotherhood” and warned the U.S., Japan and South Korea against forming an antagonistic alliance during a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Wonsan, North Korea, Saturday, according to the Russian foreign ministry.
“We warn against exploiting these ties to build alliances directed against anyone, including North Korea and, of course, Russia,” Lavrov said, according to Russia’s state Tass news agency.
Russia and North Korea have bolstered their ties over the last few years, with North Korea providing troops and munitions to Russia in support of the war in Ukraine and Russia providing military and economic assistance to the closed-off dictatorship.
Russian President Vladimir Putin also visited North Korea last year.
RUSSIA GIVES RUBIO A ‘NEW AND DIFFERENT APPROACH’ AS TRUMP PUSHES FOR PEACE WITH UKRAINE
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shakes hands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Wonsan, North Korea, Saturday. (Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout via Reuters)
The U.S., South Korea and Japan have been expanding or restoring their trilateral military exercises in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear program. On Friday, the three countries held a joint air drill involving U.S. nuclear-capable bombers near the Korean Peninsula, and their top military officers met in Seoul and urged North Korea to cease all unlawful activities that threaten regional security.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui attend a meeting in Wonsan, North Korea, Saturday. (Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout via Reuters)
North Korea may deploy more troops this summer, according to South Korean intelligence.
Lavrov called the meeting a continuation of the countries’ “strategic dialogue” and said he hoped for more direct meetings in the future.
“We exchanged views on the situation surrounding the Ukrainian crisis. … Our Korean friends confirmed their firm support for all the objectives of the special military operation, as well as for the actions of the Russian leadership and armed forces,” TASS quoted Lavrov as saying.

Lavrov called the meeting a continuation of the countries’ “strategic dialogue” and said he hoped for more direct meetings in the future. (Russian Foreign Ministry/Handout via Reuters)
Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said more Russian delegations would visit North Korea later in the year, TASS reported.
Lavrov is next scheduled to travel to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting early next week.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
World
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,235

Here are the key events on day 1,235 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Sunday, July 13:
Fighting
- Ukrainian officials said Russian air attacks overnight on Saturday killed at least two people in the western city of Chernivtsi and wounded 38 others across Ukraine.
- The raids also damaged civilian infrastructure from Kharkiv and Sumy in the northeast to Lviv, Lutsk and Chernivtsi in the west.
- The Russian Ministry of Defence said it attacked companies in Ukraine’s military-industrial complex in Lviv, Kharkiv and Lutsk, as well as a military aerodrome.
- The United Nations Human Rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said that June saw the highest monthly civilian casualties in three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 injured.
- In Russia, a man was killed in the Belgorod region after a shell struck a private house, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Politics and diplomacy
- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told visiting Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that his country was ready to “unconditionally support” all actions taken by Moscow in Ukraine.
- Earlier, Lavrov held talks with his North Korean counterpart, Choe Son Hui, in Wonsan, and they issued a joint statement pledging support to safeguard the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other’s countries, according to North Korean state media.
- Lavrov also warned the United States, South Korea and Japan against forming “alliances directed against anyone, including North Korea and, of course, Russia”.
- Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, said his government hoped to reach an agreement with the European Union and its partners on guarantees that Slovakia would not suffer from the end of Russian gas supplies by Tuesday. Slovakia has been blocking the EU’s 18th sanctions package on Russia over its disagreement with a proposal to end all imports of Russian gas from 2028. Slovakia, which gets the majority of its gas from Russian supplier Gazprom under a long-term deal valid until 2034, argues the move could cause shortages, a rise in prices and transit fees, and lead to damage claims.
- Russia blamed Western sanctions for the collapse of its agreement with the UN to facilitate exports of Russian food and fertilisers. The three-year agreement was signed in 2022 in a bid to rein in global food prices.
Weapons
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was “close to reaching a multilevel agreement” with the US “on new Patriot systems and missiles for them”. Ukraine was stepping up production of its own interceptor systems, he added.
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